Commonly, one or more shear bolts are utilized in support of a concave or a section of a concave extending partially around a bottom portion of a rotor of a threshing system of an agricultural combine, which shear bolt or bolts are designed to fail or break to allow the concave or concave section to fall away from the rotor when large slugs of crop material and/or hard foreign objects enter the space between the concave segment and the rotor. This is intended to prevent damage to the threshing system, but also results in degraded performance of the threshing system. Typically, if a shear bolt breaks to allow a segment of the concave to fall away from the rotor, contamination in the clean grain and/or discharge of larger pieces of crop material from the crop residue system of the combine will be noticed. Often, the investigation into the decreased performance will begin or will be concentrated on the cleaning system of the combine, such that excessive machine downtime may be required before the failed concave shear bolt is discovered.
Thus, what is sought is a manner of detecting a failed or broken concave shear bolt automatically and quickly, and which is simple and economical to implement.